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Speaker 1: It's time for True Crime Tuesday.

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Speaker 2: The story is true? Sounds true? No, it sounds made up.

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Gary and Shannon present True Crime.

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Speaker 3: So rarely do we hear from the family members of

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Speaker 3: people who commit horrific crimes, and the questions are always there,

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Speaker 3: what did they know? A lot of recent attention has

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Speaker 3: been on the siblings of the Reiner kid who killed

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Speaker 3: his parents. What's it like? Do you know growing up

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Speaker 3: that your brother is a monster? Are there signs? And

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Speaker 3: rarely do we get anyone talking about that until now.

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Speaker 3: Brian Coburger is the guy who stabbed and killed four

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Speaker 3: college students at the University of Idaho, and his sister

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Speaker 3: is talking about what it was like growing up with

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Speaker 3: Brian Coburger and what it was like when she found

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Speaker 3: out the news of the murders, And in fact, that's

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Speaker 3: how this article starts, as the news had landed that

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Speaker 3: four college students were stabbed to death at a house

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Speaker 3: near the University of Idaho. Her name is Mel Mel Coburger.

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Speaker 3: Mel was preparing to start a new job as wait

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Speaker 3: for it, a mental health therapist in New Jersey, and

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Speaker 3: when she hears this, she goes, oh my god. She said,

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Speaker 3: there was a sense of alarm. She knew that her Brian,

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Speaker 3: her brother Brian, lived just fifteen minutes away from the

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Speaker 3: scene of this house of the slaughter of these students.

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Speaker 2: There were no.

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Speaker 3: Suspects, and she knew that her brother liked to go

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Speaker 3: for late night jogs, so she said to him. She

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Speaker 3: remembers telling her brother, Brian Coburger, Brian, you're running outside

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Speaker 3: in this psycho killers on the loose by careful. He

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Speaker 3: thanked her for checking in on him and told her

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Speaker 3: don't worry, I'll stay safe.

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Speaker 1: So remember December of that year, he drives across country,

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Speaker 1: goes back to his parents' house in Pennsylvania for the holidays,

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Speaker 1: and late December, mel Cooburger gets a call from her

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Speaker 1: other sister, or from her sister, I should say, Amanda,

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Speaker 1: that law enforcement burst into the house, FBI, local cops, everybody,

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Speaker 1: and arrested Brian Coburger for those four murders. And she

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Speaker 1: said that she wondered if it was a prank at first,

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Speaker 1: and then this sense of nausea took over.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with the FBI.

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Speaker 3: Brian's been arrested, and she said, I'm like, for what

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Speaker 3: the Idaho murders, she was told, and that's I mean,

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Speaker 3: I feel that sense of nausea just hearing that that

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Speaker 3: your brother is responsible for this awful, heinous, the most

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Speaker 3: heinous quad murder that you had ever heard of, probably

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Speaker 3: in your entire life.

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Speaker 1: Well, and remember what comes next is the descriptions of

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Speaker 1: this guy, his personality, his infatuation with crime and criminology,

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Speaker 1: and that's what he was studying, but also this very unaffected,

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Speaker 1: emotionless person.

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Speaker 3: For the past three years, his family has kept quiet,

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Speaker 3: They have avoided interviews. He has pleaded guilty, if you

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Speaker 3: don't remember, accepted four life sentences. But she and she

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Speaker 3: the sister mal is still worried that she may say

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Speaker 3: something that's going to further traumatize her family, the family

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Speaker 3: of the parents, and the families of all the four killed.

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Speaker 3: And she knows her family's challenges with Brian through the

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Speaker 3: years cannot compare to what those families have endured, so

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Speaker 3: she doesn't want to make it sound like that at all,

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Speaker 3: But she does get into some of the specifics that

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Speaker 3: they grew up in the Poconos. Home life centered on

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Speaker 3: family readings of books like Little House on the Prairie,

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Speaker 3: lessons rooted in Mom's Catholic upbringing. They had her and

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Speaker 3: her brother had been, you know, told about the values

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Speaker 3: of loyalty, self reliance, putting the needs of others ahead

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Speaker 3: of their own. She says, some of our fondest childhood

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Speaker 3: memories were the nights when the parents, Marian and Michael,

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Speaker 3: would order takeout and they would lay on blankets out

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Speaker 3: on the deck. They look up at the stars. They

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Speaker 3: talk about astronomy and wonders of the world.

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Speaker 1: There was a lot that goes into the questions around

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Speaker 1: the family when the family, if the family ever had

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Speaker 1: questions about whether Brian was responsible for it.

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Speaker 3: It seems like things started to arrive in adolescence. We

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Speaker 3: are in the midst of true crime Tuesday. Remember Brian Koberger,

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Speaker 3: the one who was into criminology and a PhD student

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Speaker 3: in Idaho when he broke into that home and murdered

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Speaker 3: those four students there University of Idaho.

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Speaker 2: Awful, awful occurrence.

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Speaker 3: He has, by the way, pleaded guilty, accepted four life sentences.

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Speaker 3: And now his sister is actually talking about her reaction

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Speaker 3: to what happened in the bombshell that when she heard

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Speaker 3: the news like we all did, and remember there was

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Speaker 3: quite some time we heard the news for University of

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Speaker 3: Idaho students slaughtered in their home, and then nothing. There

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Speaker 3: was a big vacuum and everyone was feeling it with

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Speaker 3: what the hell happened? Who was it, why, and the

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Speaker 3: whole thing. And she knew that her brother lived about

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Speaker 3: fifteen minutes away and actually told him, you know, I know,

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Speaker 3: you go on night jogs, be careful, there's a psycho

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Speaker 3: out there. I mean, that's how off guard she was

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Speaker 3: caught by the fact that it was her brother.

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Speaker 2: That carried out on thinkable violence like this.

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Speaker 1: She described this little house on the prairie style life

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Speaker 1: that they had. Mom's Catholic upbringing had an impact when

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Speaker 1: they grew up in the Pocono's friends described how Brian

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Speaker 1: was a bit overweight as a teenager and had sort

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Speaker 1: of a standoffish personality that the family now says was

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Speaker 1: probably a result of his autism.

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Speaker 3: They say he endured persistent bullying that he wrote online

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Speaker 3: during those years of having no emotion, little remorse, feeling

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Speaker 3: as if he were quoting here an organic sack of

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Speaker 3: meat with no self worth. And then came the heroin problem.

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Speaker 1: I guess at one point he had stolen his sister

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Speaker 1: Mel's phone and sold it at a mall to buy

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Speaker 1: more drugs. And when he did that, that's when the

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Speaker 1: parents that crossed the line. They called the police because

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Speaker 1: Mel says they were all worried that he was on

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Speaker 1: a path to early death. I guess one of his

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Speaker 1: friends had done and there's similar circumstances.

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Speaker 3: But then came treatment, and they said after he went

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Speaker 3: to treatment, he appeared to be on a better trajectory.

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Speaker 3: That she and her brother both shared an interest in

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Speaker 3: crime psychology. She was, as we mentioned earlier, pursuing a

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Speaker 3: career in mental health therapy at the same time he

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Speaker 3: started talking about a career in policing. He went on

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Speaker 3: to study psychology in Eastern Pennsylvania before getting into the

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Speaker 3: PhD program in criminology at Washington State. She said, we're

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Speaker 3: also proud of him because he had overcome so much,

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Speaker 3: and of course you would be. Here's a kid who

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Speaker 3: struggled as an overweight teenager. He was bullied all the time.

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Speaker 3: He picks up heroin and goes to a treatment center

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Speaker 3: and then suddenly is an academic.

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Speaker 2: Wow. Best case scenario, right.

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Speaker 1: She did say that he was socially awkward, she did

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Speaker 1: say that he could be abrasive at times. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is don't forget the dynamics of a brother sister

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Speaker 1: relationship can often with that regardless of the personalities. And

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Speaker 1: she said they did often argue, but that she never

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Speaker 1: saw him violent, and once she actually was the one

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Speaker 1: violent she tried to force him out of the house

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Speaker 1: during an argument. He de escalated the situation by just

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Speaker 1: holding her hands back, so that idea that he was

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Speaker 1: responsible for this horrific, barbaric, gruesome crime was something that

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Speaker 1: struck the family and they still have to deal with.

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Speaker 3: So the murders happened and they still didn't have any

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Speaker 3: one for it. He went home for Christmas. Eventually caught

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Speaker 3: up with him at the family home, but before they

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Speaker 3: did family had gotten there for Christmas. She remembered being

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Speaker 3: thrilled to see her brother back home, giving him a

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Speaker 3: big hug. He apparently had started a strict diet, so

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Speaker 3: his mother had made him vegan cookies for Christmas. They

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Speaker 3: played TV party games. One night, mel the sister, was

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Speaker 3: cleaning up the kitchen and a piece of foil cut

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Speaker 3: her finger and the brother, Brian Kohburger, was too super

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Speaker 3: grossed out at the sight of blood, but then helped

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Speaker 3: her clean it up and covered it with a bandage.

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Speaker 1: What just as a guy who created a bloodbath in

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Speaker 1: that house. She said that in that time, just a

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Speaker 1: couple of weeks between the murders and when he was arrested,

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Speaker 1: she recalls him only briefly mentioning the murders, just simply

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Speaker 1: saying that they're still looking for the killer at that point.

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Speaker 3: In fact, when they released the car they were looking

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Speaker 3: for when they asked the public for help and they

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Speaker 3: described a white Hyun day of in twenty eleven, twenty thirteen,

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Speaker 3: the sister mel knew her brother had driven a white

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Speaker 3: Alantra back from and she wondered, huh, they must be

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Speaker 3: looking for the same model.

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Speaker 1: But then realize, oh, no, they're looking twenty eleven to

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Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. He's driving a twenty fifteen model.

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Speaker 2: So weird that you would just be like, oh, what

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Speaker 2: a coincidence.

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Speaker 1: What she didn't know, what nobody in the family knew,

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Speaker 1: was that they had identified him as the primary suspect

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Speaker 1: before that, so they were already surveilling the house. So

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Speaker 1: it was December thirtieth, twenty twenty two. Brian Coberger and

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Speaker 1: his parents were the only three in the house. That's

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Speaker 1: when the police came in, guns drawn, put him in handcuffs.

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Speaker 2: Listen to this.

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Speaker 3: She says her mom has been praying daily for the

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Speaker 3: families of the victims, and that she mel has put

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Speaker 3: the names of the victims and their birthdays into her

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Speaker 3: digital calendar so she gets reminders about them. She says,

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Speaker 3: the idea is making me so emotional. I can barely

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Speaker 3: speak to you about it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't. She just she goes on and talks

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Speaker 1: about life with her brother in the prison, in prison

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Speaker 1: and will be forever for consecutive life sentences, I believe.

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Speaker 1: And they talk about including him and holidays and things

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Speaker 1: like that, and they try to do regular calls.

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Speaker 2: Oh my god, I can't, but just the.

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Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, that guy destroys those four lives, right.

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Speaker 2: You don't stop loving your son or your brother.

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Speaker 1: Well, he destroys those four lives, right, Think of how

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Speaker 1: many were There's just there or three other people in

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Speaker 1: the house.

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Speaker 2: That's four lives.

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Speaker 3: Everyone who knew those people, their lives are altered forever.

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Speaker 1: The crime scene investigators, I mean, the people walked into

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Speaker 1: that scene before it had

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Speaker 3: People's trajectory that didn't go to the University of Idaho

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Speaker 3: because of this, or you know, I mean, it's just

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Speaker 3: it's it's not quantifiable how much damage something like this

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Speaker 3: does to how many people you just don't ever know